


for the woods, when they give at all, give unstintedly

by lachesisgrimm (olga_theodora)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Cats, Don't copy to another site, F/M, HEA, Marriage of Convenience, Misunderstandings, No Pregnancy, Only One Bed, Pining, and ben "valancy stirling" solo, featuring rey "barney snaith" johnson, heart disease but never blatantly described, lmm is discreet about marital relations but I am less so, medical misdiagnosis, oops where did those feelings come from, rey and ben are both in their late 20s, some kind of 1920s mildly anachronistic historical au, still set in canada, the blue castle homage, virgin ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28392966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olga_theodora/pseuds/lachesisgrimm
Summary: She had always thought Ben Solo a bit of a dear.(Inspired by LM Montgomery'sThe Blue Castle,but make it reylo.)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 95
Kudos: 262





	for the woods, when they give at all, give unstintedly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dr_Roslin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Roslin/gifts).



> I really love _The Blue Castle_ \- it is a wonderful, funny romance and very much worth the read (though this fic spoils most of the major plot points, if it is on your TBR list)- and a while back Dr_Roslin/RandomBks and I had a great chat about the possibilities of making it into a Reylo AU. This is for you, Dr_Roslin- I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> The title is taken from chapter three of the book in question.

She had always thought Ben Solo a bit of a dear, even before they exchanged their first words: tall and well-made and so utterly quiet, trailing behind his much louder family though he was the tallest among them. He looked, Rey had thought then, like someone who urgently needed a room to call his own but instead had been relegated to whatever corner the Solos and Skywalkers might spare for their ever-bachelor kin. She had never been given a chance to question him on the matter for she was hardly in his social circle; she was a wild outcast in the town, known for driving an old, loud car and allowing her hair to tangle in the breeze. She knew what was said behind her back, and found the rumors amusing enough. 

“I could have been a bank robber in another life,” she admitted cheerfully to her cats at one point or another. “I daresay I’d be a dab hand at that.”

The cats, sleek and majestic, rarely dignified any of her ramblings with a response, which Rey tolerated with a smile. 

Rey was fine being alone, after all. She had her books to write and nature to love; she had her island cabin and a bed all her own and if she wished to flee she need only pack up her car and take to the road, disappearing without anyone the wiser. No one would ever pin Rey to one place, no one would deny her seconds or even thirds at dinner, and no one would rip up the wildflowers just because she liked to admire them. No one would ever lay claim to Rey again, and she had spent the ten years since her eighteenth birthday making sure of exactly that. 

Still. She found Ben Solo intriguing (and she was allowed to enjoy people, she reminded herself often, just as she was allowed to leave before they could tire of her), and she had rather enjoyed the one smile of his she had seen, one that she herself had inspired by driving past his very staid uncle and offering him a mocking tip of her battered hat. Luke Skywalker, pillar of the community and bearer of many opinions (she needn’t be acquainted to know that; he had the _look_ ) had sputtered in indignation, and she had caught the barest glimpse of upturned lips from his nephew. 

He had a nice mouth. Rey had kissed enough mouths to be an expert on the matter, at least when it came to her tastes, and she had long ago determined she approved of those lips so often set in a sulking pout.

When the first words he ever spoke to her were an offer of marriage- “For,” he explained with an apologetic expression, hope in his eyes, “I’ll be dead within the year, a doctor has said so, and I’d rather like to live while I still can”- she surprised herself by accepting, because the letter of diagnosis he offered was real enough, and she liked the look of him, and maybe she wanted to see him smile again, and maybe she wanted some insight into what made that mind of his tick.

And it would be the decent thing to do, she supposed, to give him a bit of fun before he left this mortal coil, or at the very least to offer the kind of peace his family would likely deny him in his last days. 

\- - -

They each had their one condition, on marrying: she was never to mention his illness, and he was never to enter her small study. His condition seemed to weigh more heavily on her than hers on him, but she hardly knew him at all; for all Rey knew he had little in the way of curiosity. She was a means to an end, really. She was a useful escape, and one Ben settled into far more naturally than she had expected: he moved into her cabin on the island, he made friends with the cats, he set to housekeeping with the assured air of someone who had been doing so for years. Rey had the feeling that if she were to murder someone on the couch he would remove the blood from the upholstery without complaint, and possibly dig a grave for her, as well. 

An interesting thought. Presumably she would laugh about it, someday, perhaps after Ben’s heart had stopped and people began gossiping about her anew, adding ‘murderer’ to her other rumored titles. The letter Ben had already written and sealed would hopefully be enough to shift official attention from her presumed involvement (and there would be medical records, too), but public opinion would prefer the more sordid explanation. 

The knowledge that she would cry after he died was not welcome, but before the first week was out Rey knew that as fact. He was sweet and unexpectedly funny, the restful moon to her restless sun, and he didn’t snore like the cats. 

By the end of the second week her carefully erected shields had all but shattered, and he had shaken the foundation underneath her by quoting words she herself had written under a pen name- not once, not twice, but three separate times. 

At the end of the third week- as they strolled in the moonlight after a late supper, an owl calling overhead and the silver rays gilding his hair- she kissed him for the first time, arms wound around his neck and his mouth eager if uncertain against her own. 

The next morning she told him that she would be away for a few days on a ramble, and (bag slung over her shoulder, her notebook and pencils and bare necessities inside) she strode away into the woods, feeling sickeningly as if her heart dwelt at an ever-growing distance, tucked snugly beside Ben’s own failing one. 

When she came home two days later, no work done and the charm of the forest inexplicably pale and muted, she practically skipped up the dark path toward the windows glowing with light and threw herself into his welcoming arms. 

He was smiling, she noted. He was smiling for her. 

\- - -

It made no sense, his illness, and she both hated and loved the heart that beat inside of him. Loved it because it was Ben’s, and because he grew dearer to her by the day (a truth she kept secret; he would likely prefer not to know), and hated it because it would stop too soon and deprive her of his smile and laugh and peaceful sleeping face on the pillow next to hers. How devious his disease must be, to allow him to glow with life in his last months when he had spent so many years pale and subdued- and she knew personally, now, how broad and fit he was under his casual half-buttoned shirts and trousers and suspenders, how utterly indestructible his nude body appeared.

It had started with a kiss, as such things often did… and they kissed often, after her ramble, because she enjoyed the activity and he did too and it would be selfish, surely, to deny him whatever pleasures she could offer. The tentative cup of his hand over her breast, his gasp as she rocked against his clothed erection, the unexpected slide of his tongue up the side of her neck- if they were both joyously consenting, what was the harm?

That his heart might give out from the strain actually bothered Rey a great deal, but she had promised to treat him no differently because of it and she wanted him rather fiendishly. When one night their eyes met- hers questioning, his alight with a soft emotion that would make her quail coming from anyone else- Ben merely said, “I am your husband, sweetheart.”

It was answer enough. She led him back to their bed, carefully helped him from his clothing and recklessly ripped away her own, and rode him with a slowness and tenderness she rarely allowed herself in the act. “My good husband,” she crooned as she watched what remained of his composure crumble to pieces, as she pinned his hands to the bed, fingers laced through his own. “My own moonlight.”

She knew (for like often knows like) that there had been a shortage of loving words in his life. She might not be able to remedy the lack in the time he had left, but she could offer up the praises that raised color on his cheeks and made his lashes flutter. Rey had little care for binding vows but she would keep the ones she had sworn in the minister’s parlor: she would love him and honor him and protect him, in sickness and in health, and would worship him with her body as he so dearly needed to be worshiped. 

His heart was beating wildly when she pulled him into her arms, though not dangerously so. He breathed shuddering gasps against her skin, face pressed against her breasts and hands curled up against her belly, and when he unexpectedly laughed she tickled the back of his neck. “What is it?”

“I just,” he replied, lips brushing against one nipple, “wish I had known this would happen, someday- it would have made all the constant reminders about my past failures so much easier to bear.”

She snorted, running a hand through his hair. “I can only imagine what sins they raised against you. Did you terrorize a village?” she teased. “Level a school?”

He shifted, settling beside her and propping himself up on one elbow. “I,” he informed her with immense gravity, “was caught in the pantry eating my aunt’s raspberry jam. My young age did not excuse the crime.”

“I should think not,” she agreed with equal solemnity, curling an arm under her head. His gaze, as she had hoped, slid to her breasts with fascination. “What else, then?”

“One of the silver teaspoons once went missing at the family picnic under my watch.”

“Oh, dear.” Her free hand slid slowly up his chest, the backs of her fingers trailing against his skin. “A good thing we have no family silver; I would go sleepless worrying about the whereabouts of each and every piece.”

“Understandably. I can’t be trusted with the stuff.” He hesitated, and then his arm was around her waist and his face close to her own. “Is it acceptable to make love more than once a night?”

He was stirring against her thigh, and if she hadn’t known the truth she would think him the image of a virile, healthy man in the prime of his life. “We do what we like,” she said in answer. “I don’t give a fig for what anyone else thinks.”

Ben loved her sweetly for that reassurance, his body covering her own, and though she cried a little at her peak she made certain he never saw. 

\- - -

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. Ben’s heart continued in its steady beat (Rey checked surreptitiously every day, her ear pressed against his chest, her fingertips against his pulse), and she allowed herself to love him in the secretive, half-wild way that came naturally to her. He was hers to feed, to warm against the chill of winter, to ply with treats and experiences and an advance copy of her newest book.

Not that he knew that she was Jane Foster. She might have told him despite never telling another living soul, but she found herself shy in the face of his obvious admiration. Suppose he changed, once he knew? Suppose he turned angry, even, though her deception was long-lived and had nothing to do with him. Certain people knew the name Rey Johnson, certain people she had no wish to ever meet again. Better to keep her money and what little fame she had separate, and if the coat she bought him that Christmas cost far more than he suspected (warmer than cheaper articles, with deep pockets for his large hands) that hardly mattered. 

She would leave, Rey decided in the lazy days between Christmas and the New Year. When Ben passed she would slip away to somewhere she could be a non-entity. She would take a new name- Rebecca, perhaps, or Rachel- so that the last person to call her by her true name would always be Ben. 

“I could pick you out blindfolded by the way you breathe alone,” Ben said sleepily one night, and the fact that she could do the same just hammered home her intentions to be the witch in the woods, the cautionary tale, and never grow close to anyone again. It hurt to love so hopelessly, hurt more than the loneliness had ever hurt. 

“I know,” she said, drawing a hand up his muscled arm. “I believe I could tell your step on the stair apart from every other man in the world.”

His voice, when he replied, was somehow both wistful and contented. “What a nice dust-pile we have, the two of us.”

She didn’t need to hear the story behind the phrase to understand. Sometimes that was all one got, a dust-pile. Sometimes that was enough. “Shall we go for a long walk, tomorrow? See the snow on the trees?” 

“Yes, I think so.” He hummed against the nape of her neck. “Do you know what Jane Foster says about the snow?”

_That it is a miracle of rest,_ Rey thought sadly. _The lulling of life into a much-needed sleep, to emerge even more victorious in the spring._

“No,” she lied, pushing away the thought that the lovely springs to come would be forever marred by the loss of the man behind her. “Tell me, if you must.”

\- - -

Their close call changed everything, as sudden scares are wont to do: the oncoming train, Ben’s shoe stuck in the tracks, her deep-seated understanding that if she couldn’t get him free then she would stand with him till the end. Rey only remembered after they were safe that any violent shock was likely to carry him off- yet he still breathed beside her, shaking but in good color. Belatedly, dazedly, she thought _perhaps something could be done._ He had been so certain, on proposing, that his situation was terminal, and she had never argued. She had _promised_ to never bring up the matter again. 

Maybe it was time to break that promise. 

Maybe she could load him into her car and drive to the nearest big city with all its specialists, and maybe- 

And she would have, if he hadn’t disappeared a day later while she was away investigating those possibilities, leaving only a letter behind in the off-limits study that clearly revealed her double life; his _the doctor made an error_ and his _I understand if you hate me_ and his offer of divorce and _I did not intend to trap you_ spattered by two different sets of tear-stains- his born from reasons unknown, hers from relief. 

She went to him in that big, cold house where his mother and uncle lived, her hair tangled down her back and her clothing rumpled. She crept in through a window long after midnight, not willing to wait for polite visiting hours; she tiptoed up the creaking stairs and slipped into the room he had once described as his own. She settled on the side of his bed, the shifting of the mattress shaking him from sleep. 

“What an utterly depressing room,” she said when his eyes fluttered open, Ben staring at her as if she were some wispy holdover of his dreams. “We have a nicer one, at home.”

He blinked, and then murmured, “I’m not going to die.”

“I know. I cried.” Leaning over him, her hair veiling them both from the moon, she continued in a voice made hesitant by as yet unshed tears. “I’ve never been happier, Ben, knowing that you would live.”

“Happy?” 

“I broke into this house, didn’t I?” She brushed a kiss over his brow, over the dark shadows she could vaguely make out under his eyes. “I’ve never done that before, no matter what the townsfolk might say.”

There was the barest twitch of a smile. “You don’t want a divorce, then?” 

“A divorce?” Slipping under the dull quilts, boots and all, she settled on top of him with an aggrieved huff. “As if I would ever let you go.” He smelled like foreign soap, all sickly sweet flowers that she wanted to scrub from his skin. “My beautiful, loyal husband… who I love very much.” Rey blinked away a tear. “Please.”

His hand, familiar but missing a ring, came up to cup her cheek. “You never said.”

“There are a lot of things I’ve never said,” she admitted truthfully, and caught a glimpse of a grin and tears of his own.

“Jane Foster, Rey?”

“Entering Bluebeard’s chamber was a bit of a tell, wasn’t it?” She sighed, ducking her head to hide a blush. “Are you very mad?”

“Relieved.” When she looked up he teased, “I thought you were a counterfeiter,” with the sly humor that had bloomed over the last months, and together they snickered in the still of the night, doing their best to be quiet but not altogether succeeding. 

“Shall we sneak away?” she asked once they were recovered, her head pillowed on his shoulder, though she was still crying and suspected he was, too. 

“I’d rather like to see the look on my uncle’s face when we appear at breakfast together.” There was a pause as he brushed a kiss over her forehead, as she placed a hand over his beating heart. “I love you… long before tonight I loved you, dear. This isn’t pity?”

She would kiss him in front of all and sundry, Rey decided. She would never go a day without kissing him again. “No- and ‘dearest’,” she corrected, the steady rhythm under her palm building castles she had thought long abandoned back up, brick by brick. 

“Dearest.”

\- - -

“He’s mine,” she would tell his mother and uncle the next morning, who- as Ben had clearly let some information slip- were only mildly scandalized by her appearance, appeased as they were by both money and respected literary works marrying into the family. 

“I’m yours,” she would whisper mid-kiss on their long, meandering ramble home, their hands clasped and the first spring blooms tucked in his dark hair. 

“That’s ours,” she would sigh in contentment at the sight of their cabin, blue and purple-tinted in the dusk, and he would carry her over the threshold as if they were a couple newly wed.


End file.
